


Weaponized

by Badwolf36



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Season/Series 02, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Weapons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23504818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Badwolf36/pseuds/Badwolf36
Summary: I wrote this ages ago, but never got around to finishing and or/posting. Thought it was finally time to take care of both. Hope you enjoy!
Relationships: Nick Burkhardt/Juliette Silverton, Rosalee Calvert/Monroe
Comments: 10
Kudos: 35





	Weaponized

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this ages ago, but never got around to finishing and or/posting. Thought it was finally time to take care of both. Hope you enjoy!

Hank likes to think he’s a good detective.

He’s observant, intuitive and knows how to take a suspect to the ground with minimal fuss.

Thinking he was going insane put a serious dent in his confidence. Finding out his partner shared his delusions, his goddaughter and best friend were apparently coyotes, and that half the suspects and witnesses they’d dealt with lately were fairy tale creatures hadn’t done much to bolster that confidence.

But at his core, Hank is still a good detective.

It’s why he’s started observing his partner.

Now that he’s clued into the Grimm’s world (and hadn’t that been a trip, assuring a witness that “the Grimm” wasn’t going to kill them), he’s been able to make sense of some of his partner’s new habits.

Other things too, like the strange injuries, the haggard appearance, the sudden knowledge of arcane weapons, the way he looks at some murder scenes like he’s seen them before.

That last one’s been the hardest pill to swallow. Nick doesn’t look like he’s happy about it either, but Hank gets the feeling his partner puts his Grimm duties above his cop duties. It doesn’t sit well with him. But accept it or not, he knows he’s not going to see Nick up the river, especially when the younger man had kept him from committing himself to a mental hospital.

It doesn’t stop him from keeping a close eye on Nick. Today, the normally focused man had been positively spacey, eyes landing on the ceiling fan more often than his computer screen or case notes.

He’s also been shivering, even with the long-sleeved gray Henley he’s sporting.

“How can you possibly be cold?” Hank asks, pulling his collar away from his chest to flap some cool air onto himself.

Nick takes awhile to respond, eyes tracking slowly over to him. “Huh?”

“Earth to Nick. The hell is wrong with you, man?”

Nick just smiles at him. “Long night,” he says, raising his eyebrows in a significant manner.

Right, Grimm stuff. Hank wonders if there are any bodies floating in the Willamette right now because Nick put them there. From what he’s gathered, Nick doesn’t kill wesen unless he absolutely has to. It doesn’t make him feel any better about letting his partner murder people.

But Hank’s about to let it go when he notices the way Nick’s shirt is turning a damp black along one of his arms.

“It get rough?” he asks casually.

Nick follows his gaze, barely seeming to register that he’s bleeding through his shirt. “Huh,” he says faintly.

“Yeah, ‘huh’ doesn’t cut it. What happened?”

“Nothing,” Nick says, drawing his wounded arm close to his body. “Really, Hank. I’m fine.”

Hank studies his partner. The brunette didn’t seem to be in any real distress, although pain was tightening the corner of his eyes. Other than that, he seems perfectly placid, almost unnervingly so.

“Alright,” Hank says. He settles back into his chair, more determined than ever to watch out for his partner since he’s pretty sure the man can’t see just how unnatural it is to be that unconcerned that he’s injured and bleeding. “You keep telling yourself that.”

***************

Wu clutches his empty coffee mug like a lifeline, heading for the station’s breakroom and the, hopefully, freshly brewed caffeine jolt he’s jonesing for.

He finds Nick Burkhardt standing to the right of the coffee pots, mixing his coffee with an obscene amount of sugar if the numerous empty white packets are any indication.

“Hey, Nick.”

“Hey,” he says.

Wu starts filling his mug; the industrial-sized one Captain Renard had given him in the precinct gift exchange last Christmas. The side read ‘The beatings will continue until the paperwork is done’ with a white skull and crossed bones emblazoned on the reverse of the black surface. He’d been so surprised when he’d unwrapped it and discovered his captain had a sense of humor that he’d almost dropped it. It’s his favorite mug now.

He reaches around Nick to grab a sugar packet and plastic stirrer for himself, wrinkling his nose at the breakroom’s overly rank smell.

“Listen, I’ve got a betting pool going for the Civil War. You in?”

Nick turns and blinks slowly at him. Wu notes how pale he is. They’re all losing hard-won tans since Portland’s seen nothing but rain and gloom for the last three months, but Nick’s taking on the pallor of some of their finest-looking morgue residents.

“Civil War.” Nick scrunches up his eyebrows in confusion. “Already?”

Wu shrugs. “Seems like it comes around quicker every year. So, who are you a fan of: Ducks or Beavers?”

Nick seems very far away when he says, “I have some friends who are beavers.” He smirks before adding, “They’re big Beavers fans too.”

“Ooooookay,” Wu says, finishing doctoring his coffee. “Twenty bucks on OSU it is.”

He picks up his mug, takes a sip and frowns at the liquid inside before reaching for more sugar. Apparently, Nick had known what he’d been doing with the extra packets.

“Oh,” Nick says softly, setting down his mug with a soft _click._ Wu freezes with his hand halfway to the counter.

For all the time he’s worked with Nick, Wu’s only heard him use that tone of voice twice.

The first was after Nick’s first time being shot at. Wu had found him at his desk toward the end of shift, uttering something in that soft, broken tone. Before he could figure out what, Renard had swooped in, escorting the new detective to his office and keeping him there until Nick had calmed somewhat.

The second time, he, Nick and Hank had been chasing a murder suspect who’d slipped out of the back of a scene they’d been investigating. Nick had managed to bring the burly suspect to the ground, cuffing him efficiently before pushing off the prone man to stumble against the wall.

Nick had planted his hand hard against his side and the hairs on the back of Wu’s neck had stood up when Nick had used that tone to say, “Should’ve watched for weapons.”

The knife wound had required eight stitches and Nick had been particularly skittish about chasing suspects for three months after that.

So, when he hears Nick say, “Oh,” in just that tone of voice, adrenaline hits his system like a freight train.

Nick’s staring at the floor, where droplets of bright red blood are now flecking the cheap, black-and-white checkered linoleum that covers the breakroom floor. Wu looks for the source, finding that the blood is winding down both of Nick’s hands, the stream starting somewhere above his wrists. His jacket is dark with it as well and Wu can’t believe that he had attributed the tang of blood in the air to someone’s lunch going off in the fridge.

He cautiously moves forward, setting his mug down. “Nick?”

Nick gives him a dazed look when he turns before looking back down at the floor.

“That’s not…right,” he says uncomprehendingly.

Wu manages to wrap his arms around Nick just as the other man’s body goes slack.

“I need some help in here!” he yells. “Officer down!”

******************

“We’ll be holding him for a psychiatric evaluation once he stabilizes a bit more. Right now, we’ve got him on a 24-hour suicide watch. Just as a precaution, you understand.”

The short, mousy-haired, male doctor flicks Nick’s chart closed and gives Sean a meaningful look.

Sean ignores it. “He’ll recover then?”

The doctor sighs, running a hand over the chart. “Yes, he’ll recover. But he does have a case of mild anemia. Possibly something that could be explained away with this incident, but my suspicion is that Detective Burkhardt has been engaging in cutting behavior for weeks. The scar tissue on his wrists seems to support this.”

“I see.” But Sean didn’t see. Hadn’t seen. He hadn’t seen and it’s an unacceptable lapse by his approximation.

Now, he’s staring right at Nick through the glass separating the room from the rest of the hospital, and yet he feels like he’s never seen him before. This is a different creature from the all-too-human detective he’d first met; different from the Grimm Nick is growing to be. Whatever _this_ is, it’s a pale imitation in a blue hospital gown, wrists wrapped in thick gauze. It’s restrained too, padded cuffs below the bandages on the wrists and snaking beneath the blankets to snare the ankles. ‘Suicide risk,’ the doctor had said, casually dismissing that Nick had never shown any such inclination or even made any move to finish the job when he came to at the hospital with scalpels in reach.

“Captain Renard?” the doctor interrupts. “If you have any more questions about his care…”

Sean turns around and fixes the doctor with a steely look. He purposely does not look at the man’s nametag. He’s in a frightful mood and ruining a man’s life for telling him bad news is beneath him. “No, that will be all.”

“Visiting hours stop at 8 p.m.,” the doctor offers meekly before scurrying off.

Sean had sent Hank and Wu home after it became clear Nick wasn’t in immediate danger. The two men had only left after extracting the promise from Sean that he would call when he’d heard something. Stalling the doctors from calling Juliette or any of the others listed as Nick’s emergency contacts had been harder, but a show of his power (both his authority as a police captain and as canton ruler) had ensured no one would be called about Nick for the next 24 hours at least. Shoving his thoughts away from Juliette had been even more difficult, but his will is strong and a zaubertrank was not going to get in the way of his plans.

He fingers the phone in his jacket pocket, unsure whether Nick’s colleagues would want to hear that Nick was considered a serious risk to himself. Perhaps they had already put the pieces together themselves, but confirming it would do no one any good.

In the end, Sean decides to rely on his instincts, which have served him fairly well thus far (despite misjudgments when it came to certain hexenbiests). He leaves the phone in his pocket and enters his subordinate’s hospital room.

A nurse takes one look at the imposing shadow he casts and abandons her patient to his fate.

“You can quit pretending to sleep,” Sean says as he sits down in the uncomfortable green plastic chair.

Nick opens his eyes slowly, focusing on the ceiling.

“You have one chance,” Sean says calmly, even though he’s seething inside, “to tell me what, precisely, happened today.”

Nick tries to lift his wrist and seems stymied when the restraint keeps him in place.

“They have you on a suicide watch. They seem to think that slitting your wrists was a failed attempt.”

Nick doesn’t do anything so obvious as freeze, but he does lower his hand to the bed very slowly.

“In case you’re confused about the order of events, Sgt. Wu caught you when you passed out from blood loss. You were brought to the hospital, where Detective Griffin saw fit to inform us that he caught you with a similar injury two weeks ago. Explain. Now.”

Nick licks his lips a few times before turning his head toward the door, away from Sean. “I’m…” his voice cracks, “…tired.”

Sean lets the silence stretch, checking to see if more is forthcoming. When Nick remains silent, he says, “You have a week of paid medical leave. I suggest you use that time to pull yourself together.”

He stands up. He hesitates for a moment before putting his hands on one of Nick’s wrist restraints.

“Is this necessary?” he asks quietly.

Nick doesn’t actually turn to look at him, but he does shake his head. Sean undoes the wrist and ankle cuff closest to him before moving to Nick’s other side. He tamps down the frustration when Nick again turns his head to avoid looking him in the eye.

“You’ll be evaluated in the morning,” he says once the restraints are off. He pauses, groping for the right thing to say. It’s an uncomfortable feeling and not one he wants to get used to. “Nick. If there’s something you’re dealing with, something you’d like to tell me…”

It’s a leading question, he knows that. But Nick revealing his identity as a Grimm to Sean, the potential of a powerful ally that he would represent to the younger man (even just as Nick knows him now, without any of his royal connections), well, he knows what a temptation that must represent in the detective’s weakened state.

Nick surprises him though. “No…sir. Nothing.”

“Then I’d like you to think about the real reason you’re in a hospital bed right now, Detective,” he snaps, unable to stop himself. His face flickers minutely; a woge around his lips that he stamps down on ruthlessly.

Nick turns to look at him just after he manages. Sean examines the man’s eyes, which are vibrant beneath the dulling sheen of morphine. They’re the eyes of someone who has accepted pain and suffering as their lot in life. They’re the eyes of someone who has hit a breaking point and soldiered on, tired and lonely, because there was no one else to shoulder the burden.

But there’s something else in the blue-gray depths, something Sean wasn’t expecting to see considering the circumstances: a pure vitality for life and a cunning that speaks to the precise way Nick had done this to himself.

Perhaps it had been a coping mechanism for his new life, but Nick had obviously had an ulterior motive for bleeding himself.

When Sean figures it out, he smiles. It’s extremely clever and it means Nick is becoming more ruthless; a fact which he is both encouraged by and wary of.

Very deliberately, he says, “I’ll see you in the morning, Detective Burkhardt.”

Nick doesn’t respond, but he does nod very slightly. It’s all the acknowledgment Sean needs to know that Nick will still _be_ there in the morning, alive and thriving.

*************

“Detective Burkhardt. Is it alright if I call you Nick?

Dr. Karen Turner has dealt with a variety of patients before, cops included. But something about Detective Nick Burkhardt seems wrong in a way that’s triggering all of her professional senses and a few of her personal ones.

“That’s fine,” he says amiably, but he doesn’t look up at her from where he’s picking at the edge of the bandages on his left wrist with the fingers on his right hand.

“Okay, Nick. Nick, would like to tell me what happened the other day?”

“I passed out from blood loss,” he says, calm and placid.

Karen pushes a loose strand of her curly black hair behind her ear and writes down a few of Nick’s reactions to the questions so far. He’s hunched over a little on the couch kitty-corner to her chair, but his posture’s almost disturbingly relaxed.

“And why were you bleeding, Nick?”

Getting a self-harmer to admit to the behavior was sometimes the hardest step, Karen had found.

“I cut myself,” Nick says. Karen freezes. She hadn’t expected him to just come out and say it. He hadn’t seemed ashamed of it either, just as though he were giving a calm statement of the facts.

“Why did you do that?” she finally asks.

Nick looks up at her then, something cool and calculating in his gaze. She suddenly feels very exposed, like he can see deep down into the heart of her and all the secrets she keeps there. It’s not just unnerving; it’s utterly terrifying.

“If I told you,” he says slowly, voice kind and gentle, “you wouldn’t believe me. So, I’m going to tell you that I cut myself because I have a very stressful job and it lets me feel something. I am not suicidal. I cut too deep without realizing it.”

He smiles at her, a facial expression devoid of warmth.

“That part’s even true.” Pausing for a moment, he seems to consider something. After a moment, he seems to come to a conclusion. “This incident has shown me the dangers involved in self-harming and I’ll be taking steps to curb this behavior in the future.”

He returns to picking at his bandages, gaze dropping to the steady destruction of the gauze. “Don’t you need to write that down?” he asks.

Karen writes it down.

They sit for the remaining 20 minutes of Nick’s evaluation in silence.

In the end, Nick shakes her hand, accepts her business card and a pamphlet on self-harming behaviors and smiles at her when he leaves.

She lets the administrative staff know she’s cleared him for release.

Then she cancels her appointments for the rest of the day, sits down at her desk and doesn’t speak a word until it’s time to go home.

**************

“Since when am I your medical contact?” Monroe gripes as Nick climbs into his Beetle.

“Since I added the words ‘Grimm’ and ‘Wesen’ to my vocabulary,” Nick retorts. “Hey, Rosalee.”

“How are you feeling, Nick?” she asks from where she’s crammed into the backseat.

“Better,” Nick says.

“Bullshit,” Monroe snorts. “Hank called. You have some explaining to do.”

“Trailer,” Nick says firmly.

Monroe frowns, but pulls out of the hospital parking lot and makes the turn that will get him to the lot where the trailer’s parked.

The drive is filled with chit-chat, Nick asking Rosalee about the shop and Monroe about a watch commission he’d gotten from some big-name collector in Idaho. It was distracting enough that they arrived at the trailer without a single question asked about Nick’s stay in the hospital.

Nick is out of the car and already inside the trailer by the time Monroe kills the ignition, gets out and helps Rosalee from the back.

The pair follow after him, trading wary glances before doing so.

When they enter, Nick is sitting at the small desk, a stained knife in one hand and a liquid-filled glass vial in the other.

“What did Hank tell you?” he asks, setting the knife on top of a stack of books.

“That you’d apparently slit your wrists and tried to bleed out in the police station,” Monroe says, heading to the weapons cabinet while Rosalee takes a seat on what Nick had nicknamed “the sultan bed.”

“He’s worried about you, Nick. We all are. What happened?”

Nick sighs, setting the vial down to start picking at the edge of his bandages.

“Quit that,” Monroe and Rosalee say together, Monroe without even turning from where he’s examining a serrated dagger with undisguised delight.

Nick frowns, but leaves off shredding the gauze. He fidgets for a moment before grabbing the vial and leaning forward in his chair to hand it to Rosalee.

Uncorking it, she takes a whiff and instantly turns pale. She looks from the vial to the knife, and then to Nick before she swallows hard and chokes out, “Monroe.”

Monroe abandons the dagger immediately. Turning, he takes the few steps needed to cross the trailer and accept the vial Rosalee is holding out to him with a slightly trembling hand.

He too takes a sniff and immediately woges.

Shaking it off is an effort, but he manages.

“Nick, do you have any idea how dangerous this is? Not just for you. Did you ever think about what might happen to Rosalee and I if this ends up in the wrong hands?

Monroe is livid and his eyes stay red to reflect that.

“Were you even thinking at all?” he yells.

Nick just looks back at them both with dull, exhausted eyes. “We don’t know it works like that. It could just be Hexenbiester it affects.”

This time, Rosalee, sounding terrified, snaps, “We don’t know that it doesn’t work like that!”

Monroe recorks the vial. He takes a deep breath of the musty air in the trailer to try to clear his nose of the smell of Nick’s blood.

_The blood of a Grimm._

Nick slumps forward in his chair, planting his face in his hands to avoid the incredulous and hurt gazes Monroe and Rosalee are giving him.

“Look,” he says. “They are never going to stop. Reapers, royals, wesen. They are not going to stop until I’m dead and everyone who’s ever helped me has been made into an example. So yes, I made my blood into a weapon. Maybe it only works on hexenbiester. Maybe it works on all wesen. And if it stops even one of them from hurting my friends, I’ll consider it worth it!”

There’s a long silence as Nick breathes heavily and the other two in the trailer try to figure out how to respond.

Finally, Rosalee reaches down and wraps a slim hand around one of Nick’s bandaged wrists. “Did it stop Adalind?”

Nick’s sob in answer to that is heart-wrenching.

Rosalee kneels down in front of Nick in order to hug him. Monroe only manages to watch his friend shake with the force of his sobs for a moment before he abandons the vial on the desk and shuffles past Rosalee so he can put a comforting hand on Nick’s shoulder.

Eventually, Monroe asks one of the questions that immediately bloomed in his mind with Nick’s confession. “Did you put it on anything?”

“Loaded a…crossbow bolt with it,” Nick says, throat working hard as he tries to get control of himself. Rosalee lets him go and backs up so he can stand and pick up a crossbow bolt from inside the weapons cabinet. He hands it to Monroe, who takes it carefully in the center of the shaft between his thumb and forefinger.

“I don’t know what to do,” Nick says. “Not anymore.”

And then he turns away from them, goes to the far side of the trailer and stares at the thin window coverings.

Monroe sets the bolt down next to the vial.

He then has a silent conversation with Rosalee which involves a lot of gesturing, significant glances, and exasperation. They figure out a plan of action though. Rosalee comes around the right, Monroe the left, and they meet where Nick’s standing, each of them taking one of his hands.

Nick ends up gripping both their hands tightly, but he keeps his gaze on the trailer wall.

“You’re so strong, Nick,” Rosalee says. “Really. To be able to do what you do every day is incredible.”

“But sometimes,” Monroe continues, “strong people forget that they don’t have to do everything on their own.”

Nick sucks in a deep breath.

“I don’t…” He stops, starts again. “I can’t…” he trails off. Then he sighs, the noise like a death rattle.

“It wasn’t just for the blood,” he admits. The words sound like they’ve been torn from his throat. “It felt…nice when I did it. Of course, it hurt, but…. The first time was a case. I got clawed. Didn’t think anything of it. But then I came back here, and I started thinking about using it. About weaponizing my blood. And when I cut myself, things almost felt a little normal.

“I know that’s insane, but look at my life! All of you view me as a murderer before you even know me. But when I’m sitting in here, surrounded by all this stuff, when I was sitting in here with just a knife and that vial and my blood all over, I felt human. It was red; I knew human blood was red. Simple. And if I was hurting myself, if by doing that I could protect the people around me, well, that’s an acceptable price.”

Silence again reigns in the trailer.

“I think we should sit down,” Rosalee says. “That bed’s really comfy.”

It’s an effort to navigate the trailer because Monroe and Rosalee keep hold of Nick’s hands. He doesn’t shake them off though, so they hold him a bit tighter. They end up sitting on the bed, shoulders pressed into one another and hands resting intertwined on the tops of their legs.

“So,” Rosalee starts. Nick still isn’t looking at them, eyes instead downcast to study his bandages. “When I used to get high on J, I didn’t care what happened to me. All that mattered was chasing that feeling.”

Nick leans into her side a little, obviously understanding where she’s going with her story.

“It started taking more and more and more, just to even get close to that rush.”

“I…”

“Nick,” she says softly. “You cut yourself so deep you nearly bled to death. What if you’d been here, alone?”

Nick moves to get up, but Monroe throws one of his legs over Nick’s, pinning him down. “You need to hear this,” he says, gentle but unyielding.

Nick doesn’t say anything to that, but he also doesn’t try to move again.

“You’re not alone in this, Nick,” Rosalee continues. “Granted, none of us have any idea what it means to be a Grimm. Just the same way _you_ can’t understand the terror we wesen feel when you see us and we recognize what you are. It’s instinct. It’s not right, it’s not fair, but it _is_ what we all have to live with.”

“And we get that it can’t be easy with Juliette,” Monroe chimes in, gripping Nick’s hand a little tighter. “We haven’t quit looking for a solution. We’re trying to help her _and_ you. But Nick…” he paused, ssarching for the right words. “You can’t check out on us like this. Just because you have a lot of enemies doesn’t mean you should be rushing to meet your death.”

“I’m not…”

“Nick,” Rosalee cuts him off. “We don’t mean just this. Maybe you didn’t mean to do this. But Hank’s been worried enough about some of things you’ve been doing on your cases that he’s been talking to us about it.”

“Sounds serious,” Nick says flatly.

“Quit acting like you don’t care!” Monroe growls, not letting himself be baited. Gently, he lifts Nick’s captured hand, turning it so his bandaged wrist, already spotting with blood, is exposed.

“These aren’t the actions of someone who doesn’t care.”

Nick’s face fell, tears pricking up at the corners of his eyes. He pulled his arm up, with Rosalee still attached to it, to swipe at his face with the inside of his upper arm.

“Nothing about this is like me. I can’t be who I was anymore.” Nick laughed, the bitter sound echoing in the small space. “And I don’t really like what I’m becoming. I mean, just look at me. Look at where we are. I hardly feel like a detective some days, especially when I’m supposed to be solving murders that _I’ve_ committed.”

There was really nothing to be said to that.

“This wasn’t supposed to be my life,” he continues. “Juliette and I were supposed to get married, be together. I had a dangerous job, but people didn’t hunt me down because of what I could do. And my aunt…my mom…so many people have lied to me.”

“Life is hard, man,” Monroe says, not unkindly. “Every day’s a battle – against your instincts, other people, injustice, and all sorts of stuff that just rains down like a never-ending storm. But the blood thing…that doesn’t hurt just you. It hurts all of us to see you like this. And there’s a very real possibility that your blood could literally strip away a huge part of who we are. And that’s scary, dude. Really scary.”

Rosalee picks up the conversation as Monroe trails off. “Extremely scary. But we’re not scared of just plain old you, Nick. And yes, you’ve been lied to. But you know what that means?”

It takes a long time, but Nick finally asks, “What?”

“It means,” Rosalee says, the picture of patience, “that you can choose what sort of Grimm you are. No one’s taught you that you have to kill us all or burn down our homes or brand us.”

“I wouldn’t do that!” Nick bursts out. “I could never…”

“But you could load a weapon with your blood, Nick,” Monroe says. “You did do that. Don’t hurt the people you care about just because you’re trying to lash out at the people who’ve hurt you. There’s no way that ends up in anything but death and pain.”

Monroe shakes his hand free of Nick’s and slides his fingers up until they’re encircling Nick’s wrist, right over the blood-spotted bandage. Then he squeezes them together until Nick winces.

“Stop,” Nick says quietly.

“You said it made you feel human,” Monroe says calmly. Blood starts winding a slow path toward Nick’s hand, a steady seep as the bandages stain even further.

“Stop,” Nick says again, now trying to tug his hand away.

“Not until you understand,” Monroe says, red bleeding into his irises.

Nick turns to Rosalee, but she just shakes her head.

“He’s right. _Do_ you understand why you can’t keep doing this?”

“I…” Nick tugs futilely at his wrist with his other hand. “I’m not suicidal.”

“No,” Monroe agrees. “But you are angry. And that makes you volatile. It makes you dangerous – to yourself and everyone around you. And until you understand that, Nick, I don’t think I can let you go.”

Nick slumps down between them. “Now what?” he asks.

Rosalee moves her free hand to slowly start tugging at Monroe’s fingers, which loosen obligingly.

“Believe us when we tell you you’re going too far. Stop throwing yourself into these dangerous situations,” Nick opens his mouth to protest, but she continues before he can interrupt, “when you have other options. And you’ve _had_ other options, Nick. You haven’t been alone, no matter how much I’m sure it’s felt like it at times.”

“And you should talk to someone. We know a couple of clued-in types and...”

“No.”

“Then us, at least. And Hank. Doesn’t have to be everything, but we’re here. You know that, right?”

“I…yes. I know that.”

“And we’ll keep reminding you,” Rosalee says, leaning into his side a little more heavily. Nick takes a deep breath at that, then lets it judder out of him.

Eventually, Nick straightens up. He pulls his hands back into his own lap, and this time, he’s released.

“Monroe?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you…please get rid of those?” He gestures at the vial and bolt on the desk.

Monroe nods.

“Consider it done.” He moves to get up, but stops when Nick’s hand prevents him from moving.

Nick looks utterly sheepish when he says, “Uh, in a minute?”

“Sure, bud.” He sits back down, tugging a few pillows behind their backs before resuming his position.

Nearby, a locomotive’s horn sounds as it starts moving, but the trio inside the trailer stay where they are, offering and receiving comfort in uneven measures.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Comments are loved and treasured!


End file.
